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Andrew,
I am at Sac State and am in my final semester of Grad school for social work. I know that there ought to be counselors at U.C Davis that can help direct you with this large decision. Since you have shown the aptitude for computers then you might be interested in other mathematical engineering stuff. my neighbor just graduated with a degree in that.

Personality types and talents all play into these things. Business is a good direction as well. What you might want to do is to go to the various departments at Davis and talk to the heads of those departments. Because I have never met you I cannot really give much input as I would start just from your personality type.

If I recall the only majors that have any restrictions are the engineering majors at Davis. So I think all you need to do is go to the letters and science building and file for a petition to transfer. Make sure you know which line of economics you want to do.

If anything, just go to your counselor (Beth Floyd I think?) and ask her what to do. It should be the same counselor that you see to clear your holds.

my roommate and 1 of his friends i have met graduated managerial econ from UCD. they both got crappy jobs they hate right after graduating. dunno.. that might play a role in your decision. from what i have observed (i was an environmental engineer major.. not at UCD), engineers get paid more for doing less work after graduating. while all other majors get paid so little.. i have no idea how people survive.

of course.. this is all a generality based on what i have seen. maybe all my non-enineering friends are just all too lazy to get a job they like and pays well. dont stay in a major if u dont think u'll at least tolerate the work the rest of your life.

Impreza01 - thanks for the advice, i'm talkign to my counselor right now.. and i dropped ECS because the deeper i get into the major the more i hate programming and debugging

blaznasn - the problem is that i don't feel confident in any other engineering major ie mechanical or civil.. for some reason i've always wanted to go business or ecs.. and now i don't think i want to do ecs

HongKongBeef - i've heard that just getting a BS degree won't get me anywyere but i plan on going to graduate school if i do go managerial econ

thanks to everyone for their help. i just want an outside opinion other than my peers and counselors.

I'm a working Engineer (Telecom) and work is NOTHING like school. I majored in digital (computer) and did lots of programming etc for school but when I got out I went to work in telecom - totally different field and I like my job (honestly).

If programming/debugging isn't for you, you only have to do it in school, once you get out you can be:

1. Power Engineer (very low stress job if working for PG&E, but high stress if working for a contractor).

2. Design Engineer (very rewarding, personally and monitarily, but requires enormous ammounts of hours worked and no OT pay). This type of work can be analog, digital, IC, CPU or board level - all of these guys get paid the most and there is a great deal of job satisfaction but the hours worked are grueling.

3. Telecom Engineer (you are the RE, responsible engineer for getting stuff done, I love this job, but I will probably have to move into managment if I want to make more money). BTW I have no intention of moving into managment.

IMHO, I have had many jobs and I like Engineering the best, the pay is decent and except for design engineering, there is very little or no OT. I can come and go as I please and I get to work on a large variety of things.

I have also worked as an Applied Physics Lab technician (good job but need MS for promotion), Power Engineer (very relaxed job NEVER any OT), Digital Engineer (using Xylinx as a controller, this job required so much OT that I didn't want to do it anymore) and as a Telecom engineer for 5 different companies. I have also owned my own business.

Conclusion:

You are making a life decision, and if my experiance can help, Engineering is a great base to do whatever you want in the future. Especially electrical engineering. School is not necessarily like work.

PS - In thinking over my life, your supervisor can make a good job bad or a bad job tolerable. I have never had a bad supervisor (most of my supervisors have been engineers, but not my current one).

If you want, or any other Electrical Engineering student wants, I would be happy to take you around what I do for a day. It has very little in relation to school.

My big concern when I went to school is, "what will I be doing in the 'real world'?"

I can show you what a Power Engineer does for a utility or a generator too. I can show you what a "planner" does as well or a "system engineer". All of these positions have very high "job satisfaction" and the pay is okay ($80K + 10% bonus is typical with 5 years experiance - starting pay is around $50K with 10% annual bonus, after 2 years typical pay is around $70K+bonus).

yeah i started as a CSC major but damn, after taking a couple programming classes I was like forget that. Went to thinking about it and I was like I don't care how much I get payed, i don't want to have a midlife crisis down the line after discovering I've spent most my life locked in a tiny cubicle doing something I don't care for.

Might as well pick something that you enjoy doing. Have you taken one of those career tests that career centers at schools have? i dunno...i guess that'd give ya an idea of the stuff you'd probably like & be good at doing..

Originally posted by dRu888 Might as well pick something that you enjoy doing. Have you taken one of those career tests that career centers at schools have? i dunno...i guess that'd give ya an idea of the stuff you'd probably like & be good at doing..

I took one of these while working on my first major as CSC and the problem with them is that the person you are at 19 is not the person you will be at 30.

Some of the engineering positions mentioned above (Power, Telecom, etc) are a bit misleading because they are more like job titles in a neo-technical world that doesn't quite grasp the heart of the engineering field and the curriculum involved in choosing an engineering career path. A specialized degree can be a drag if you later find out that the field you really wanted to get into requires a broader understanding of engineering concepts.

In my opinion, if you choose Engineering, try to stay in one of the core facets (Electrical, Mechanical, Aeronautical, Civil, or Chemical) and you will likely find the best career options. If you get a double-degree in EE & ME, you will be unstoppable (trust me).

The junk about salary numbers irritates me and this sort of stuff is a remnant of the dot-com bust here in SF where anybody who knew java or html could earn heaps of cash at the onset of their career. Some are still earning these exorbitant salaries but others are jobless and going back to the basics.

Think more along the lines of what would give you the greatest satisfaction...

It gives a broad and (as a result) somewhat shallow perspective of the various areas of solid chemistry and solid state physics. It really is like chemsitry with solids instead of liquids and gases.

It also deals in reasonable depth with different ways to measure innumerable physical properties.

The advantage is that out of school you have a wide variety of different types of jobs available, from applications engineering for measurement tool companies to foundry work, process engineering for semiconductors, etc...

The downside is you get no real nitty gritty detailed training. Not so bad since like others have said, school is nothing like work, it takes a couple years to get up to speed anyway.

Also, in any engineering field statistics are becoming more and more important. Every year I see more detailed statistics where I work, and I see them entering areas where I didn't see stats used at all 5 years ago.

Materials engineering programs also vary quite a bit from school to school. Some are very technical / classroom oriented oriented pointing you in the direction of grad school (where you can taper down to a more specific area) others are more lab / experimentation oriented pointing you directly towards an undergrad degree as an end where your experiences will be more useful towards a job with a BS degree.

In my opinion, if you choose Engineering, try to stay in one of the core facets (Electrical, Mechanical, Aeronautical, Civil, or Chemical) and you will likely find the best career options. If you get a double-degree in EE & ME, you will be unstoppable (trust me).
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I agree that you should take a core field - I knew one guy who did the ME/EE thing at SFSU.

I posted the salaries that my company hires at. They tend to be a little low for the bay area. The salaries are not exorbitant and the jobs all require real (BSEE or better) engineers. Nobody here is rich, but everyone is doing okay.

All new hire engineers are payed $50K starting + bonus (this varies a little but it's about 1 month salary). After 3 years it's around $73K and after 5 years it's around $80K with about a 2.5% annual raise (if the company is doing well and 2% if not so well).

Managment pays more - salary is a little higher but bonuses are double or more depending on level of managment.

Oh man, I can remember some kick ass parties at UCD. Then again there are some I can't remember at all. Whew,..good times. No matter what path you take, remeber the golden rule....work hard, play harder. You're only young once.

wow, thanks guys for all your replies.. and i see that there are a bunch of people from different perspectives. well, tomorrow i will be talking to my counselor about possible futures and i will for sure take that career test just for fun and see what it has to say about me. most of the other engineering doesn't interest me except for ME so i might look into that as one of my options. this IS a tough time for me being a 2nd year and not knowing what i want to do. thanks for the support

All new hire engineers are payed $50K starting + bonus (this varies a little but it's about 1 month salary). After 3 years it's around $73K and after 5 years it's around $80K with about a 2.5% annual raise (if the company is doing well and 2% if not so well).

Man, I gotta change job (EE), I'm going into my 3rd year here and I'm making nowhere near that